Last March, five women gathered in a home near here to enter a secret sisterhood they were told was created to empower women.

To gain admission, they were required to give their recruiter — or “master,” as she was called — naked photographs or other compromising material and were warned that such “collateral” might be publicly released if the group’s existence were disclosed.

The women, in their 30s and 40s, belonged to a self-help organization called Nxivm, which is based in Albany and has chapters across the country, Canada and Mexico.

This story is a few weeks old; I was drawn to it by a link a friend posted on Facebook. Various gossip sites are reporting that actress Allison Mack, best known for playing Chloe Sullivan on Smallville, is "second in command" of a "sex cult." At first I thought it was material for Amusement Bark or the NFBSK forum, but looking past the salacious headline, it appears to be a much more serious story, with a lot more "cult" than "sex."